CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Tereshchenko, Denys |
|---|---|
| Title | Radicals into Experts: The Case of the Poltava Provincial Zemstvo's Statistical Bureau, 1881-1914 |
| Summary | This thesis explores the transformation of a generation of intellectuals stemming from the narodnik circles who worked at the Poltava provincial zemstvo’s statistical bureau between the 1887 and 1914. The entanglements between their politics and their statistics are in the focus of this research. The thesis argues that these intellectuals never resigned from their previous narodnik politics but sought other means to pursue them, including progressivist activism based on the “theory of small deeds” that helped invigorate local public sphere in Poltava by the end of the 19th century. Driven by idealist beliefs, the group embarked upon zemstvo statistics, i.e., a close quantified study of the peasant population of the region and its economic and social conditions. This made them local agrarian experts sine qua non in the zemstvo, with an extended network of suppliers of data all over the province. As such, they became more pragmatic than their own youthful selves, and developed something akin to an agrarianist development ideology that favored the middle peasant for his combination of willingness to modernize (and accept zemstvo services) and preservation of traditions – at the cost of both the countryside wealthy and the poor. In a case study of the statisticians’ treatment of the issue of land scarcity and peasant outmigration, the thesis finds that, in the late 1890s and early 1900s, the Statistical Bureau entertained an idea of solving the crisis of overpopulation by encouraging resettlement of poorer and landless peasants to Siberia. Although the idea was eventually rejected as impractical, the statisticians played an increasingly important role in the zemstvo on the eve of the First World War. |
| Supervisor | Balázs Trencsényi, Ostap Sereda |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/tereshchenko_denys.pdf |
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